A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



Stannon Circle takes its name from the farm near by and is in the 

 parish of St. Breward, south-east of Camelford and 4 miles by road 

 from that town ; Sir W. Onslow, bart., is the landowner. This circle 

 and Fernacre belong, as has already been said, to a class apart, of large 

 area, irregular outline and small stones set near together, but with no barrow 

 in the middle. The stones here are perhaps rather larger and more 

 uniform. The ring is so flattened on the north side as to make it 

 quite unsymmetrical, and it is curious to note how many stone circles 

 are thus irregular, although it would have been easy, with a stake for 

 centre and a rope of some sort for radius, to have traced out an exact 

 circle. ' Long Meg and her Daughters,' a circle in Cumberland with 

 an average diameter of 332 ft., has the same flattening of the northern 

 limb. The average diameter of this one is about 138 ft. ; there are 

 seventy stones in the ring, forty-one of which are erect and the rest fallen, 

 some buried. The stones are small, as the above table will show, and 

 the largest now standing (58) is 4ft. high and 4ft. 5 in. wide; all 

 are of granite. 



Viewed from the circle, the great hills which dominate these moors, 

 Row Tor and Brown Willy, are conspicuous objects. The summit of 

 Row Tor lies N. 68 E. from here and shows such a curious cleft that 

 the question arises whether at any special season the sun would rise just 

 behind this notch in the hill-top. Actual observation on the spot would 

 decide, but the sunrise on Mayday would be about N. 7iE., three 

 degrees farther south than the cleft. Brown Willy is less conspicuous, 

 although its several points show up in a striking manner, due east, or 

 nearly so, just over the slope of Louden Hill, Fernacre lying out of sight 

 between. On Stannon farm are the remains of several hut-circles ; a few 

 are to be seen on the moor near by and many more on Louden Hill. 



Lukis and Borlase do not mention this monument, but Mr. A. L. 

 Lewis has described it in the paper so often referred to and has illustrated 

 it by a plan. 1 



NINE STONES 



This circle has apparently never been 'figured or described by any 

 Cornish antiquary and yet it is of a type unusual in the county, from 



1 Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (Aug. 1895). 

 396 



